


Ghost Story

by The Chronicler (AgentFrostbite)



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Chills, Gen, Shadows - Freeform, Whispers, things that go bump in the night - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:42:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24259099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentFrostbite/pseuds/The%20Chronicler
Summary: You like a good ghost story, don't you? Doesn't everyone? The criteria is that it has to begood. I cannot promise you a good story, dear reader, but I can promise you a story. Or, perhaps, it is truth.





	Ghost Story

Everyone loves a good ghost story. At least, that's what I once heard. I find it to be true, in most cases I come across. There's something about the idea of the supernatural, the feeling that there's more than what you can see and hear, something beyond your normal senses, that intrigues us. It draws us closer, daring us to solve its mysteries with its intricate clues and grave warnings.

I've been around a while. I've heard a few good ghost stories, told in a dark bedroom with flashlights pointing up from chins, or around the flickering light of campfires in the deep of the woods. I've also learned a few from personal experience. It seems to me that telling a good ghost story is a challenge whose bragging rights are something ingrained in our deepest senses of accomplishment. Someone able to send shivers down your spine, make you look over your shoulder, and doubt your rational sense, is someone to be respected for their word-weaving.

Would you like to hear my best? What if I told you it wasn't just a tall tale? Do you still want to hear it if I tell you that you'll spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder?

I doubt you said no. Does that "Yes" come from curiosity, a desire to learn more? Is it a dare, with you determined to prove me wrong? Maybe it's some tug at your mind, leaving you unable to turn me down, even if you think it's poppycock? It might be all three. Can you tell? Does it matter?

Let's begin.

They call themselves the Forgotten. Or, perhaps, they might, if they had voices to speak with. They're the creeping things that live in the corner of your eye. That feeling that you get when you think someone's watching you, or when you catch movement at the edge of your periphery? That's them. Look quickly; you might be able to catch them. Sometimes they look like someone you know. Sometimes they look like little children in tattered clothes. Sometimes, you don't see anything but a black shadow.

You know what I'm talking about, don't you? I bet you think it really is someone, but it's a person, not a ghost. "Common sense denotes the fact that any movement is caused by a solid, tangible thing, and any person-like shadow must be caused by a person, not an imagined apparition," as someone once informed me. I don't disagree with this statement on the grounds of common sense; not at all. I also never said that they weren't once people themselves. If, indeed, they were people, then any shadow they cast would still count as one cast by a person.

I digress. Let's try another example.

Most pet owners are quite used to hearing the floor shifting beneath the paws of their feline or canine companion. Most owners of an old house are quite used to hearing the floor and walls settle of their own accord. It can occasionally be hard to tell what is and what isn't a footstep, especially when it's simply well-masked by the creaking noise itself or the volume of your music. Still, there are times, when you're alone, that you hear shifting and footsteps while your family is out and the pets are curled up next to you. Is it simply a resettling of the house? Or when you look, do you think you catch some figure looming in the doorway, only for it to vanish when you blink and resettle your position?

They work best just out of the range of sight, where you can never be sure if what you're seeing is there or if it's just your imagination.

Similarly along the lines of unsettling noises, do you ever hear someone talking across the house? When it's the dead of night and you're meandering back to your room in a haze of half-consciousness; or when you're in the basement, getting another bag of pretzels to snack on during your "have the house to myself" marathon; or perhaps when you're upstairs, doing some cleaning, and you think you hear your sister or brother, father or mother, flatmate or fiancé. But it's not them. It can't be. They're somewhere else, asleep in the beds or off at the grocery store, and of course it must be your imagination.

There's the floor creak again. Are you truly going crazy?

Or perhaps it's the Forgotten, waiting for you to forget them, so they can sneak up on you and give you a fright.

Not convinced yet? I'll give you one more.

Have you ever walked into a room and forgotten why you were there? What were you going to the kitchen to get? Why did you pause your YouTube video when your water is full and you still have plenty of snacks, the pets aren't crying for food or to relieve themselves, and the phone isn't ringing? You simply find yourself staring at the empty room, mind blank, as you scan uselessly through the last few minutes of memory, searching for the reason you're there. You never seem to find it, do you? Not until you've turned and walked away, only to have an "Ah-ha!" moment and rush back to complete your task.

I assume you think I'm about to tell you that it's the Forgotten, the boogeyman of paranoids, responsible for the inexplicable behavior. And you'd be right. But before you jump to conclusions, or mark me off as a lunatic, ponder for a moment on their name. After all, I didn't tell you why they're called the Forgotten. It's not simply because some cruel soul never loved them and condemned them to a fate of wandering the plane between planes endlessly, searching for meaning to their empty, wandering existence. It's also not because they come from ancient horror story told around a bonfire back when a good shelter was a stack of stones or logs in a roughly geometric form. It's not even because, like most mediocre ghost stories, they only occupy a place in our minds reserved for "forgotten" things, stuff we know but won't remember until it's brought up in some obscure line of conversation that likely started with the weather.

Everything on this planet needs to eat, even ghosts. Obviously, ghosts can't eat real food. They require no nourishment, no replenishing of nutrients, no substance to maintain their wispy form. No, ghosts survive off the memory of them. As long as you can remember that sneaking suspicion that you're not alone, they linger. As long as you occasionally glance over your shoulder or off into the dark distance, they remain. And every so often, you manage to catch one before it can slink to the corners of your vision, and they feast upon your memory of their appearance, in all it's terrible and bone-chilling glory, while they glide toward you with unnaturally graceful steps and a smile of malicious glee.

Followed by the always-familiar and slightly dreaded phrase, "What was I doing here again?"

I could cite even more occurrences. Random cold chills that raise goosebumps, even in a warm house. Leaves and grass shifting in the woods when there's nothing there. The way cats sometimes stare past you, as if gazing intently at some being just beyond your vision. Odd taps against the siding or windows. Strange noises, day or night, that sound just a bit too ethereal to come from birds. Harsh screeches that simply have to come from cutlery or tennis shoes; what else squeals like that?

It's alright if you don't believe me. I don't care whether you do or not. I am only here to inform you. Or, perhaps, to entertain you, if this is simply an interesting ghost story. I leave it up to you whether or not it is. But perhaps, you can see something in the corner of your eye, or out the window. Some strange shadow shifting far too fast to track accurately. A creak from the building settling, or footsteps from janitors down the hall.

Everyone loves a good ghost story. Very few of us love the truth behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> I figured I'd post this because I am deeply fond of this one. Please let me know if it gave you the same chills it always gives me!  
> Because literally, no joke, I thought I heard the dog outside my room when I was writing it, and the floorboard creaked except they were both on the bed with me and my fam was out on a grocery trip.  
> Enjoy!


End file.
